OPEC Secretary General to attend annual meetings of the IMF and the World Bank Group

Vienna, Austria, 7 October 2016--OPEC Secretary General, HE Mohammad Sanusi Barkindo, along with a delegation from the OPEC Secretariat, will be attending the Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG) that take place in Washington DC from October 7-9.

HE Barkindo has already presented a statement to the International Monetary and Financial Committee outlining OPEC’s current oil market outlook. This included commentary on global economic growth, oil demand and supply, commercial oil stocks and the demand for OPEC crude. HE Barkindo also reaffirmed OPEC’s longstanding commitment to support oil market stability for the mutual benefit of consuming and producing nations. The full statement can be found at the following link:

The Annual Meetings of the Boards of Governors of the IMF and the WBG bring together central bankers, ministers of finance and development, private sector executives, international organizations, representatives from civil society organizations and academics to discuss issues of global concern, including the world economic outlook, poverty eradication, economic development, and aid effectiveness.

HE Barkindo also delivered an intervention to the G-24 Ministerial meeting that took place on October 6. This included some background and context to the decision taken at the 170th (Extraordinary) Meeting of the OPEC Conference in Algiers last week.

He said that the landmark decision “underlines the Organization’s continued commitment to a ‘sustainable stability’ in oil markets, for the mutual interests of producing nations, for efficient and secure supplies to consumers, and with a fair return on invested capital for all producers.”

The Conference decision to opt for an OPEC-14 production target ranging between 32.5 and 33 million barrels a day, he said, “was focused on the need to accelerate the ongoing drawdown of the stock overhang and bring the rebalancing forward.”

He stressed that stability in commodity markets is vital for future global economic growth prospects. “We believe the agreement made in Algiers will be beneficial to our economies, to consumers, to the global oil market, and the world economy as a whole,” he added. The full intervention can be found at the following link:

The G-24 coordinates the position of developing countries on monetary and development issues. OPEC is represented by five of its Member Countries in the G-24 group: Algeria, Gabon, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nigeria and Venezuela. Four other OPEC Members have observer status: Ecuador, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.